In 2007, a debate raged over whether Dutchess County property owners with private wells should be required to test their water at the point of sale.

The county Legislature passed a measure that was vetoed by then-County Executive William Steinhaus. After the veto, three southern Dutchess towns enacted their own laws mandating well testing whenever a home is sold. And the county Health Department established a website to report the results of those well tests.

Through it all, county and town officials trumpeted the importance of keeping a vigilant eye on water quality.

Nearly five years later, the results of those tests have not been analyzed comprehensively for trends or patterns, either at the county or town level, a Poughkeepsie Journal investigation has found. Moreover, the Journal found, the county website is missing large amounts of data.

The Journal's findings raise questions about whether policies and systems that were represented as having a new public benefit have lived up to those claims.

More than 1,000 tests of private well water quality have been conducted whenever a home is sold since the towns of East Fishkill, Fishkill and Wappinger enacted their laws in summer 2007, the Journal's research shows. To date, the county site lists about 550 East Fishkill results, fewer than 10 results from Wappinger and none from Fishkill. It has not been updated in more than eight months.

County officials said the lack of reporting is because some results were not filed in a digital format that allowed for easy conversion to the website. Steps are being taken to improve and streamline the reporting process, they said.

Michael Caldwell, commissioner of the county Health Department since 1994, questioned whether a comprehensive analysis would merit attention at the expense of other health issues, particularly at a time of dwindling resources. The department has lost 35 workers — about 21 percent of total staff — over the past five years, he said.

"In the end, you look epidemiologically at how much effort you put into a particular issue, versus what kind of results and information you are going to get, and how much healthier is the community going to be for that effort," Caldwell said. " As I sit in my office as commissioner of health, I am looking at all of the ways that Dutchess County is healthy and all the ways we are unhealthy and how I can help our community be educated about these. Water is absolutely one of our main priorities, and I feel that we are addressing that adequately."

No law, regulation or rule requires the towns or the county to do any comprehensive analysis of the testing data. However, the idea that the mandatory tests might provide broader insight into local water quality has been promoted by officials from the time they were first proposed until the present.

In his February 2007 veto memo, Steinhaus announced a "major" initiative to create a database of water quality information for well-test collection. He "directed" any well-test information from the towns be added to the county database "to serve as a resource to residents."

Just days before the first version of the East Fishkill law was introduced at a Town Board meeting in 2007, Supervisor John Hickman said, "The earlier we can find out about contamination, the more remediation we can do, and more prevention as well." Hickman said he still thinks the information could be useful, though he said it should be studied at a county or regional level.

In a recent interview, Fishkill Supervisor Bob LaColla, who took office in November, said, "If information is available, it is incumbent on us as elected officials to collect that data for analysis."

Several experts interviewed by the Journal agreed.

"At least then you can plot the data on a map and sort the data by what they were testing for, whether that be bacteria, volatile organic compounds, or metals or whatever," said John Conrad, a hydrogeologist based in Poughkeepsie. "And then you can start to see ... any trends or clusters from viewing it in map form."

In its "statement of purpose," the Wappinger law stipulates "water test results shall be filed with the Town of Wappinger Building Department and the Dutchess County health department and will also serve as a database for identifying potential problem areas of contamination within the town."

However, the town has resisted converting its paper records into digital form to comply with the county's filing process.

Wappinger Supervisor Barbara Gutzler took office last year, inheriting a paper backlog from her predecessors, Chris Colsey and Joe Ruggiero. She said that when Health Department officials came in February to discuss the process, "I looked at them and I said, 'Surely you jest. You don't really think that I am going to dedicate one person to put all this data from (more than 200) well tests in one format for you? Sorry, I'm not going to do it.' "

Similar resistance was offered by former Fishkill Supervisor Joan Pagones after she championed the new town law.

"One branch of government can't tell another what to do," she said in a recent interview.

Indeed, county officials stress they have no authority to compel the towns to provide the data in a specific format.

"We really are just offering this as a courtesy to post it," said Sabrina Marzouka, Health Department assistant commissioner for administration. "If they don't, it remains in their desk or somewhere in a file cabinet."

That is exactly where the Wappinger reports are, Gutzler said.

"These well tests are 10 pages long, with tons of information," she said. "They are kept in the grid file for that particular parcel."

The responses from county and town leaders underscore that while many of them touted the potential value of well-test data, no one established a procedure for how and when those data should be analyzed.

"I can understand where you're coming from — five years later, is this something from government where it was a bunch of hullaballoo and no one ever did anything?" Pagones said.

Stormville resident Richard Christofori said he supports the mandatory testing law. He learned in September 2008 that a well at his new home on White Pond Road contained levels of toluene, a solvent, that exceeded state safety standards. Christofori said he assumed the chemical was a byproduct of the driveway that was put in shortly before the tests were done. But whether a larger problem exists is unknown.

"I was surprised by the results," he said. The driveway "was the only conclusion I could come up with."

Also unclear is what, if anything, will be done with the increasing history of well-test data. The president of the county's health board said it is worth considering whether there is information that should be collected and analyzed.

"Would it be of value to the citizens of the county to look at the results of several years and see what they can determine? That would certainly be something worth looking into," William Augerson said. "And although our board of health has a full plate, I would not mind bringing that to the members to raise with the department."